


When You Just Are

by EvienStark



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Sweet, commanderbang - Freeform, finding who you can let your walls down with
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 15:18:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17831078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvienStark/pseuds/EvienStark
Summary: Dan and Holly have started dating and he's noticed her a little more sullen lately. In his attempts to fix it, he inadvertently makes it worse. Until she tells him how to make it better.





	When You Just Are

**Author's Note:**

> Birthday prompt for Marie! Happy birthday!

Dan and Holly had known each other for years before this. It was what was supposed to make all this easier. But this sort of _knowing_ each other came at its own pace and with its own brand new knowledge. And while Dan had stumbled through a myriad of other relationships before, somehow this one was different. It was special, like them all, but unlike them all in that same way. Holly was a wonderful woman that demanded he take extra care and caution. 

It was for that reason that he could tell the world around her had been just a touch more gray than usual. Even though she didn’t voice it. Even though she didn’t give him reason to have alarm. There was just something about the way her eyes avoided his in smaller moments, not for any special reason, more just seemingly drawn with the heaviness of gravity to the floor. There was something about the flatness of her smiles. There was just  _something_ that wasn’t right. 

He was resolved to fix it; if he only knew how.

Making sure she wasn’t by herself seemed the easiest thing to do and yet one of the hardest obstacles to overcome in itself. His schedule was shoulder-high at all times, keeping him coming and going from one place to the next to do this and that and that other thing too. Holly was the same way, she kept busy with her own projects but had seemed to slow. So he invited her to follow him for the day with the promise of a night curled up under the covers in bed once it was all over. She seemed to mull it over (to the point of almost too long where he started to get nervous) but then agreed.

So off they went that morning, Dan trying to find a series of steps that would ultimately lighten her mood. Every single one seemed to be a pitfall, though.

He drove them to Starbucks first, and on the way turned on a playlist he’d specifically crafted for her of songs they shared together. Thinking his wavy hand movements and upbeat melodies would get her into some sort of groove. But when he looked over at her every now and again she was in a different world entirely, eyes out the window, stock still and unmoved by the music, only giving him one of those courtesy smiles when they caught eyes at a red light.

On line in the drive through he made sure to order her favorite drink with her favorite sweet thing, supplying a salacious joke that the next  _sweet thing_ she could enjoy would be back at home in bed. She didn’t laugh, not a real one. It was more a hum of agreement that wasn’t really real. But she did thank him for the drink and the snack.  The music came back on when they left the parking lot, but he wasn’t singing anymore. 

In the space of the Grump office he left her on a couch by herself, her nose in a novel and eventually a notebook she was writing in. He’d come by when he walked back and forth, from meeting to recording to hanging out to meeting to posing for social posts. He’d brush her hair affectionately one way as he passed by, he’d give her a little peck on the cheek the other. He’d try to include her in group conversations and jokes that got everyone else but her roaring with laughter. At lunch he made a big comical show about there being tomatoes in his salad when he’d asked them not to taint his otherwise wonderful greens, to the laughter of everyone save her. The blueness persisted, and he was finding himself in a deeper and deeper hole, wheels spinning in mud that wasn’t letting up any time soon. 

After he was done in the office the day was nearly half over but he had promised to make it to the studio an hour away to get a few tracks for the latest CD filled. Carefully he asked if she wanted instead to be taken home, trying to walk that delicate line. He didn’t want her to assume he didn’t want her around. But she told him she wanted to go, so they went. Music was playing in the car again but neither of them were really listening to it. Meaningless conversation passed. And that was the worst kind. 

In the studio, after some tea and listening to his scratch tracks, he got to work. The best work there was. In broken off moments he let Jim or Brian take a video of him, one of which he acknowledged with a little kiss to the lovelies at the end. When he showed it to Holly to ask if it looked and sounded okay she agreed blandly and up on the instagram it went. As they were nearing the close of the day he couldn’t ever remember being this tired before.

Someone made a joke as they were on their way out the door.  
Neither of them laughed, now both infected by the gray.

The drive home was completely quiet save the drumming of his fingers on the wheel.  _Something_ was slipping away from him. He had to replay the whole day to figure out what was going wrong. He was pulling out all the usual stops. Pouring on all the usual sunshine. Maybe even in excess. Had there been a time at all today that Holly had even mildly looked happy? 

Reaching out blindly, his eyes on the road and approaching stoplight in the distance, his hand found hers, and he finally felt something right with the world as her fingers slid between his and she brought the union to her lap. Closed her other hand over. Once he crawled to a stop at the intersection he looked over.

She was smiling.  
Not in that passive, trying way, either.

Color came back in small drips and splatters as the now amicable and somehow loving silence between them persisted. He was tired, but happier now. She seemed the same way. When they pulled up to the house she got out first and he went after her, taking her at his side with an arm around the shoulders. A quiet hum leaked out of him as they walked up the pathway and to the front door, jangle of keys quiet beneath his melody.

“I haven’t heard that song in forever.” This was the first cognizant thing she’d said all day and was smiling again at him as the light of the living room turned on and spilled over her features.

It had been playing in the car that morning.

“Yeah? In that case...”

But it didn’t matter if he’d picked that song earlier, and played it earlier, and earlier she’d been deaf to it. She heard it now. And now it was making her happy. So he led her by the hand as he sung it some more, not energetic but warm and waning as she laid her head to his chest and they rocked in the center of the room.

Slowly, he soon noticed however, that he was doing more of the moving and she was doing more of the holding on and relishing. So he moved them back step by step until he bumped against the couch and then took a seat, allowing her to sit curled in his lap atop him. Her head went to his shoulder, his cheek to her hair.

Finally, when he couldn’t bear it anymore, “What can I do?” He didn’t want this to go on forever. He didn’t want her to be so sad. But everything else he’d tried today had failed spectacularly.

“You’re doing it.” Her voice was soft, almost dreamy, but still present in the way she hadn’t been all day. “I just want to be with you.”

His brows furrowed in confusion before raising. “I was with you all day.” Not that he wanted to protest if she were truly happy now, but he really wasn’t understanding. That was the point of inviting her along. He had  _wanted_ to be with her all day, since he sensed maybe she hadn’t wanted to be alone.

Now she was confirming that he was right … even if he’d been doing it wrong somehow??

“I want to be with _you_.” She tried again, still for a few moments more before sitting up, one hand to his shoulder, the other lifting the curls from his eyes. 

His gaze searched hers and for lack of anything better to try, he grinned weakly, “Are you trying to say I’ve been someone else all day? Because if there’s two of me-”

He was off to the races to make some idiotic joke. He knew it. She knew it.

And she put a stop to it with a gentle caress of her hand across his cheek. “I don’t know how else to say it … and I’m not trying to make you mad. Or… trying to say that… you’re not real when you’re with everyone else.” In her usual delicate way, meaning no offense but trying to tell her truth. He was eager to listen, so he stayed quiet and questioning in the way he looked up at her now. “It’s just …  _this_ you. Here. With me. Where you don’t feel like…” She seemed to be struggling. “-well, like.. you have to be doing something. Or anything. For my benefit. Or for anyone’s benefit. I like it when you just  _are_ .” 

Simultaneously it felt like something in his chest unknotted while a piece of something else slipped away and shattered. He tried to give voice to her name but it came out bare and strange.

The backs of her fingers swept across his forehead. “Am I making any sense? There’s you and there’s  _you_ . There’s a reason people love you. But you don’t have to do that with me. I like just being with you.” 

Somewhere some young boy looked up from his school desk, from the back of a lone gym wall at a dance, from a group of friends in a mall, from a date gone awry- a boy who hadn’t been able to rely on looks and had grown an  ever evolving sense of humor. A chameleon in the making. A young man that loved making people laugh, even at his own expense. Especially when he didn’t know what else to do.  _Especially_ in moments like those. 

She was going to say something again but he couldn’t risk losing the momentum of that understanding, so he reached up, cupping the sides of her face in his palms and she stilled. “I’m here, Holl.”

Her hands curved over his, rubbing his cheek against his palm, smiling sweetly. “I know.” Leaning in she pressed the barest of kisses against his lips. “Thank you.” For so many things, the least of which was his understanding in this matter.

His eyes were closed as he kissed her again, but the warmth of her there was picture enough. “Thank you.” He echoed the gratitude.

It was quiet then.  
The gray had silently disappeared. 


End file.
